{"id":289672,"date":"2025-11-13T19:24:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T19:24:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/289672\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T19:24:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T19:24:08","slug":"geoengineering-research-to-combat-climate-change-takes-hit-under-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/289672\/","title":{"rendered":"Geoengineering Research to Combat Climate Change Takes Hit Under Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs you\u2019re reading this, noxious fumes are being pumped out of power plants, the tailpipes of cars, and commercial airplanes. The carbon dioxide they are emitting can remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. If we do manage to mostly eliminate the use of fossil fuels in the future, we\u2019ll still need to roll back the effects of some of these emissions in order to meet our climate goals. Scientists are currently working on technology that could help the cause, but the Trump administration\u2019s anti-climate agenda<\/a> is throwing a wrench into their progress.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are multiple types of climate interventions, sometimes referred to as geoengineering<\/a>, that the world may need to rely on to deal with the impacts of our carbon output. There\u2019s the most controversial<\/a> of the lot, called solar-radiation modification (SRM), which involves releasing aerosols into the stratosphere to essentially slightly dim the sun. There are also less contentious interventions, such as carbon-dioxide removal (CDR), which can take multiple forms and involves actually removing carbon from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

\n\tPeople hear of SRM and think of science fiction stories of blocking out the sun \u2014 but that\u2019s not quite right. The aerosols would reflect back a percent or two of sunlight that would otherwise reach the Earth. That said, there\u2019s still quite a bit we don\u2019t know about the long-term consequences of releasing aerosols into the stratosphere, so there are legitimate concerns about this idea.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause CDR is just about removing CO2 from the atmosphere, it\u2019s seen as a more straightforward, logical approach for dealing with our built up emissions. Scientists need to fine tune this technology, and there\u2019s still plenty that needs to be learned.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile SRM is controversial, many scientists feel it should be studied further in case it is needed to avoid some of the harsher effects of climate change<\/a> in the future. CDR, on the other hand, is built into many climate models, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports<\/a> for how we\u2019ll reach our climate goals.<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Trump administration\u2019s science funding cuts<\/a>, firings at agencies like the NOAA, the elimination of important science programs<\/a> at federal agencies, and other measures born out of its disregard for the climate crisis have negatively impacted the study of climate intervention methods like SRM and CDR.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI had a grant that was awarded from NOAA, but they told me that they had no money to give me, and so that I couldn\u2019t do it,\u201d Daniele Visioni, an assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at Cornell University, tells Rolling Stone. \u201cThis was explicitly research for the program aimed at understanding and reducing uncertainties when it comes to model projections of geoengineering in the longer term.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSRM, in particular, is going to require a lot more research before it could potentially be put into practice, from how to actually release aerosols to projecting their environmental impact. Some of the work here can be done with models, rather than on-the-ground research.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSolar geoengineering, which refers to reflecting a fraction of incoming sunlight \u2026 would require a small fleet of airplanes or other mechanisms for lofting particles into the stratosphere that would circulate around the whole globe,\u201d says Holly Buck, an associate professor of environment and sustainability at the University of Buffalo. \u201cThe thing about that is we really haven\u2019t done enough research to understand what the implications would be.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBuck also notes that CDR is going to be necessary to meet our climate goals. Some of the problems with it at the moment revolve around figuring out how to do it at the scale necessary and at an affordable price point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCDR is a kind of technology that if anybody could make it work at scale, which is completely unclear, it would be a good thing,\u201d says Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford. \u201cIt would be helpful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDavid Ho, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii, says that firings and the cutting of funding have had significant impacts on further developing CDR techniques, which include machines that suck CO2 out of the air, referred to as direct air capture, and the concept of reducing the acidity of the ocean so it will naturally absorb more CO2 than it already does.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRoughly 22 million tons<\/a> of carbon dioxide already find their way into the ocean every day, and reducing the ocean\u2019s acidity helps naturally increase those numbers. This can be done by grinding up silicate rocks and introducing them to the ocean.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen they fired a whole bunch of people \u2014 the indiscriminate firing of people \u2014 these carbon-dioxide removal efforts were fairly nascent, and so a lot of the people were in their probationary periods,\u201d says Ho. \u201cThey\u2019re all gone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tDirect air capture hubs that were in development have been threatened<\/a> by Department of Energy funding cuts, and many other carbon removal projects are also facing uncertain futures. As Ho says, \u201cNobody is sure what\u2019s really happening,\u201d and it\u2019s making research and development quite difficult.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNot only is the Trump administration killing<\/a> funding to renewable energy and trying to boost the fossil fuel industry, it is hurting the effort to research and deploy these climate interventions that may be necessary to win the fight against climate change in the long term. It\u2019s unclear what will be required as this threat grows going forward, so research is key to being prepared for any eventualities. The Trump administration hobbling science in America is making the world less prepared to deal with whatever scenarios the future may bring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As you\u2019re reading this, noxious fumes are being pumped out of power plants, the tailpipes of cars, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[4253,12,192,118728,79],"class_list":["post-289672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-donald-trump","tag-environment","tag-geoengineering","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}